The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28 1919. which was 5 years after the assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand which was a main cause of WWI. this treaty put an official end to WWI even though an armistice was signed to end the fighting on November 11, 1918. Which they base the holiday Veterans day on. which i thought was a little bit interesting.
The Treaty of Versailles was signed in the Palace of Versailles. Who wouldve guessed. The Treaty was a major cause of events leading up to WWII. It was a very harsh treaty that many people called the unhappy compromise.
They treaty had many agreements and negotiations in it. Germany had to pay reparations to all the countries that were affected by the war. In my opinion they were not all fair, like the war guilt clause which put all blame of the war on Germany. You cant just blame it all on them, many countries had some part in the start of the war so it wasnt fair to blame it all on Germany. Germany was also told to pay war reparations to the countries that had been deeply affected by the war. Germany was ordered to pay 132 billion marks. which was ridiculous because they already had inflation because the war. Germany also had to give some of its land to nearby countries. Another huge provision of the Treaty of Versailles was the creation of the League of Nations. Which was basically the United Nations of their time. The League of Nations ended up failing because 1 reason. The United States was a world superpower but did not join the league of nations because they tried to keep with Washington's old warning of isolationism. which was staying out of other foreign affairs.
Germany was also put under very harsh military restrictions during this time. They could only have 100,000 men with not tanks, planes, artillery, poison gas supplies. But this part of the treaty was violated by other countries and then Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and started breaking all of these restrictions. Everybody knows what happened after that.
The losses during WWI were huge because the world had never seen a war that big before.
Britain : 750,000 soldiers killed; 1,500,000 wounded
France : 1,400,000 soldiers killed; 2,500,000 wounded
Belgium : 50,000 soldiers killed
Italy : 600,000 soldiers killed
Russia : 1,700,000 soldiers killed
America : 116,000 soldiers killed
Those who had fought against the Allies suffered heavy casualties as well:Germany : 2,000,000 soldiers killed
Austria-Hungary : 1,200,000 soldiers killed
Turkey : 325,000 soldiers killed
Bulgaria : 100,000 soldiers killed
This is a picture of the crowd at the treaty of versailles.
This is a map of germany after the treaty of Versailles.
Sources:
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/treaty_of_versailles.htm
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